7/2/2011 Radioactive Waste Dumped in Open Pits Outside Los Alamos National Lab

Source: Washington's Blog
Date: 7/1/2011

To understand why a raging wildfire near the Los Alamos National Laboratory is a big deal, you must understand how wastes were disposed.
AP writes today:

Los Alamos Canyon runs past runs past the old Manhattan Project site in town and a 1940s era dump site where workers are near the end of a clean-up project of low-level radioactive waste. The World War II Manhattan Project developed the first atomic bomb, and workers from the era dumped hazardous and radioactive waste in trenches along six acres atop the mesa where the town sits.
“The threat is pretty limited,” said Kevin Smith, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration site manager for Los Alamos, which over sees the lab. “Most of the materials have been dug up.”

But a report produced by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability found:

Approximately 18 million cubic feet of radioactive and chemical solid wastes onsite were disposed of since 1943. “All of the radioactive waste and most of the chemical waste have been buried on the mesas of Pajarito Plateau where LANL is located. Radioactive liquid wastes were discharged to the canyons, initially with little treatment.”

For many years, one method of disposal was “kick-and-roll”. The back of a truck was brought to the edge of a hole and barrels of waste were kicked. Wherever the barrels rolled tow as their final resting place.

No protection was put in place to ensure contaminants did not spread from the barrel. It is not clear that today’s practices are more protective.

An estimated 899,000 curies of low-level transuranic [i.e. radioactive elements heavier than uranium, such as plutonium] wastes were buried at Los Alamos. It is difficult to estimate exactly the quantity of radionuclides buried onsite due to the inaccurate record keeping and alterations in the definitions of low-elevel waste in the intervening years. Disposal continues today in unlined pits and shafts, a practice declared illegal by the New Mexico Attorney General’s office in 2011...

Tons of plutonium were processed at LANL in the early years of development and again in the 1980s. After the Savannah River Site, LANL contains the second largest volume of plutonium-238 in the US nuclear weapons complex: this type of plutonium has a 90-year half-life, a very high activity and is extremely hazardous...

No wonder people have warned that the trees and soil in the areas surrounding the Los Alamos Laboratory may themselves now be radioactive. See this and this.

7/2/2011 Transformer explodes at Tricastin nuclear power plant in Southern France

Date: 7/2/2011

I could not find any English reports on the fire so I piped some German and French articles through Google Translate. Following are the results.

From Der Standard:

France
Explosion in Atomkraftwerk Tricastin
02. July 2011 19:20

Fire brought under control

Paris - In the southern French nuclear plant Tricastin it came to French media reports of an explosion. A fire had broken out, but this has been brought under control in the afternoon, it said on the website of the newspaper "Dauphine Libere." People were not injured. The explosion is said to have occurred in a transformer outside the nuclear zone. (APA)

From BFMTV.com:

A fire hit on Saturday afternoon, the transformer unit to stop the nuclear Tricastin in the Drôme. Large plumes of black smoke escaped but according to EDF, there will be consequences on the environment.
Posted July 2, 2011 at 21:23

From leJDD.fr:

An explosion at the plant Tricastin

A transformer of the power plant Tricastin, Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (Drôme), exploded Saturday afternoon. The fire was quickly brought under control and the damage appears to no effect on the operation of the site.

"The fire was quickly extinguished." The prefecture of the Drôme, interviewed by leJDD.fr , has sought to reassure about an explosion on Saturday at the site of the nuclear plant Tricastin, in the commune of Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux. According to EDF, also contacted, an electrical transformer outside the nuclear zone, exploded around 15:30, causing the temporary shutdown of the plant. Material was then caught fire, releasing a large black smoke, which was witnessed by many residents and road. "The wind has not pressed the smoke on the ground and no motorist was annoyed," assures the prefecture.

Internal services of EDF responded immediately, locking the access to the site. Firefighters responded just minutes later to control the fire, confined at 15:55. "No one was hurt and there was no damage to the environment," says the prefecture.

Tricastin plant is subject to careful monitoring of the nuclear safety authority (ASN). The latter, in a 2007 report, stated that "the site had yet to make progress on the management of training, development permits and fire response times in case of fire that remain too long." A year later, the release of carbon, in June and September, and a leak of uranium in July, had caused great concern. ASN also announced last Thursday, have imposed new security requirements concerning the EDF reactor No. 1 of the plant. Commissioned in 1980, it might work for another ten years if the EDF gives the standards. The explosion took place Saturday in the Unit 1 power plant, fueled by the reactor 1.

Simplified map of the site of Tricastin (credit: Roulex_45/Wikipedia Commons).

GV - leJDD.fr

Saturday, July 2, 2011

There have in the past been safety concerns and incidents at this particular nuclear power plant, as per Reuters and Wikipedia. A recent Bloomberg article dated 7/1/2011 details that EDF (Electricite de France SA) France's largest operator of nuclear power plants was ordered to improve the Tricastin nuclear power plant's defense against natural disasters (floods, earthquakes and fires):

...
EDF must reinforce the earthquake buffers at the Tricastin reactor as well as improve anti-flooding measures, according to a report released yesterday by the national atomic watchdog. Nobody from EDF could be reached for comment today.
...

7/1/2011 Wildfire distance to toxic (nuclear and otherwise) waste dumps on Los Alamos National Lab grounds

Date: 7/1/2011

Below is the MDA (Materials Disposal Areas) map from the Los Alamos Study Group website. For a detailed description of each MDA click on the map:

To visit this map page directly click here

The USDA Forest Service provides wildfire detection data which can be downloaded and viewed in Google Maps. In order to see the distance between the Las Conchas wildfire to the nuclear (or chemical/explosive) waste dump sites on the grounds of the Los Alamos National Lab I overlaid the inverted image of the above map on top of the Google Map with the fire detections data from the USDA Forest Service. Since the overlaid image is inverted (for better clarity) the original MDA map colors are transformed from red=>blue, green=>red, black=>white etc.

Here is the composite map, showing only detections 0-6 hours old (darker red) or 6-12 hours old (lighter red):

The data set I used was for GOES and obtained by clicking the "Current" link next to "Fire Detections:".

There is a light red square (6-12 hour old detection) just about touching the biggest blue blob (biggest red blob from the original Los Alamos Study Group Map).

Following is the Technical Area map from Los Alamos Study Group:

To visit this map page directly click here

I did a similar overlay of the technical areas on top of the 0-6 hour and 0-12 hour fire detections:

The light red square (6-12 hour old detection) is right on the North edge of TA-82, TA-03 and TA-43.

Finally here is the composite that combines the MDA (Material Disposal Areas) map with the Technical Areas map:

7/1/2011 (Video) New Analysis of Unit 3 Fuel Pool Video Reveals Top of Fuel Bundle

Source: Fairewinds Associates
Date: July 1, 2011
by: Arnie Gundersen

A video first released by TEPCO in April has been re-analyzed by Ian Goddard and appears to reveal a handle found atop a single nuclear fuel bundle. This raises more questions about the condition of any fuel still remaining in the Unit 3 fuel pool.

6/30/2011 Revealed: British government's plan to play down Fukushima

Source: UK Guardian
Date: Thursday 30 June 2011 21.36 BST
by: Rob Edwards

Government officials launched a PR campaign to ensure the accident at the Fukushima 

nuclear facility in Japan did not derail plans for new nuclear power stations in the UK. 

Photograph: AP

 

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.
...
Read full article here

6/30/2011 Where those 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium contaminated waste were headed

Date: 6/30/2011

The following video from KOATV New Mexico (channel 7) reports on the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) 26 miles Southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico: [1]


Los Alamos National Lab sends some it's nuclear waste here. The 30000 55-gallon drums of radioactive plutonium contaminated waste sitting above ground under cloth tents, as mentioned in various news stories, was/is slated to be delivered to this Carlsbad WIPP site. Quoting the AP:

...
The anti-nuclear watchdog group Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, however, said the fire appeared to be about 3 1/2 miles from a dumpsite where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a low-level radiation dump site in southern New Mexico.

Lab spokesman Steve Sandoval declined to confirm that there were any such drums currently on the property. He acknowledged that low-level waste is at times put in drums and regularly taken from the lab to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project site in Carlsbad. [2]
...

Sources:
[1] (Video) A Look At The WIPP Facility, KOATV New Mexico (Channel 7) YouTube Channel
[2] Wildfire shuts Los Alamos lab, forces evacuations, Associated Press

(Video) Monju fast-breeder reactor at Tsuruga, Japan

Date: 6/22/2011, 6/23/2011 upload dates

6/22/2011 RT: The Big Picture

Thom Hartman's article corresponding to this video reads:

...
Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Watchdog at Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. If Japan didn't have its hands full with one melted down nuclear plant at Fukushima - it certainly does now with another nuclear power plant on the verge of melting down. About 300 miles southwest of Fukushima sits the Monju nuclear reactor - a prototype fast-breeder reactor filled to the brim with plutonium - the deadliest element on the face of the planet. And last year - a 3 ton device of some sort fell into the Monju reactor blocking access to the nuclear fuel rods in the reactor core - and despite several attempts - has yet to be recovered. Another attempt will be made next week to clear the 3 ton object from the reactor - but critics caution that the procedure is extremely dangerous and could trigger an explosion in the nuclear fuel rods. One ominous sign of just how dangerous the situation is - a top manager at the plant just recently committed suicide. Think of the damaged Monju plant as a nuclear bomb just waiting to go off that could take out the city of Kyoto which is just 60 miles from the plant - and has a population of 1.5 million people. And Japan's largest city Tokyo is downwind from the crippled Monju plant. So what does this all mean? And what's the latest with the two nuclear plants that are in danger right here in the United States - in Nebraska?[1]
...

Since the Thom Hartman interview with Kevin Kamps, the 3.3 ton device they mention was successfully extracted per NHK World in an 8 hour procedure, without incident.
6/23/2011 NHK World


Although it is a relief to hear that no accidents happened as feared with the heavy machinery extraction process, now the Monju reactor can be re-started after a 14 year idle period. Per The Japan Times:

...
The agency hopes to resume test runs of the reactor at 40 percent of its output capacity by the end of March, aiming for full operation by the end of March 2014.[2]
...

The original premise behind the operation of the (some would argue extremely dangerous) reactor is recycling nuclear fuel. The drawback is that Monju is cooled with liquid sodium, which back in 1995 caused a serious nuclear accident (fire) with this particular reactor when the sodium leaked out in to open air.

Sources:
[1] Thom Hartmann: Second Japan Nuke... More Dangerous Than Fukushima?, truth-out.org
[2] Monju reactor unclogged for restart, The Japan Times

6/29/2011 Cesium 134 and 137 in Tokyo rooftop dust

Source: SAFECAST.jp
Date: 6/29/2011
by: Marco Kaltofen

This is a gamma spectrum of dust wiped from a Tokyo rooftop. The detector is located at Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Physics Department. The results are estimates because of the low weight of dust in the sample. The test found 51 +/- 17 kBq/Kg cesium-134 and 30 +/- 10 kBq/Kg cesium-137. This result is higher than for many soil samples around Greater Tokyo. This is expected since dust samples are less diluted by existing nonradioactive soil material. Not knowing the exact amount of surface area sampled, this measurement can not be directly compared to results given as Bq/square meter.

Gamma spectrum using WPI germanium detector

Almost all of the radioactivity in the sample is coming from cesium isotopes. Just as you would avoid breathing in dusts that contained lead or asbestos, one should avoid breathing in dusts that contain this much radiocesium. Parents are often advised to wash childrens’ hands to avoid ingesting lead in dust. This is also a good practice around dusts that contain radiocesium.

6/28/2011 Treatment for Radiation Poisoning

Source: Washington's Blog
Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2011

You've heard that potassium iodide helps protect against some types of radiation.

In fact, it only protects against iodine 131 poisoning (and, if not needed, may cause severe adverse reactions in some individuals).

But there are actually different treatments for different types of radiation.

The following chart provided by the Food and Drug Administration summarizes the treatments for exposure to various radioactive elements (click chart for better image):


Prussian blue is taken to minimize damage from cesium. As FDA notes:

The FDA has determined that the 500 mg Prussian blue capsules, when manufactured under the conditions of an approved New Drug Application (NDA), can be found safe and effective for the treatment of known or suspected internal contamination with radioactive cesium, radioactive thallium, or non-radioactive thallium. This decision is based on a careful review of published literature articles containing reports, data, and experiences of people who were exposed to high levels of thallium or cesium-137 and were treated effectively with Prussian blue.

***
Prussian blue works using a mechanism known as ion exchange. Cesium or thallium that have been absorbed into the body are removed by the liver and passed into the intestine and are then re-absorbed into the body (entero-hepatic circulation). Prussian blue works by trapping thallium and cesium in the intestine, so that they can be passed out of the body in the stool rather than be re-absorbed. If persons are exposed to radioactive cesium, radioactive thallium, or non-radioactive thallium, taking Prussian blue may reduce the risk of death and major illness from radiation or poisoning.

And see this.

DTPA is taken to reduce damage from plutonium, as well as americium and curium. FDA reports:

The FDA has determined that Ca-DTPA and Zn-DTPA are safe and effective for treating internal contamination with plutonium, americium, or curium. The drugs increase the rate of elimination of these radioactive materials from the body.

Sodium bicarbonate plus diuretics (things which increase urine output) may reduce damage from uranium. FDA notes:

Uranium contamination has been treated with oral sodium bicarbonate, regulated to maintain an alkaline urine pH, and accompanied by diuretics. Oral sodium bicarbonate has not been approved in the United States for this indication.

Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. While I have no idea whether it is true or not, many alternative people advocate bathing in baking soda after being exposed to uranium.

And see this.

Note: I am not a medical professional and this does not constitute medical or health advice. This is for general informational purposes only. Some or all of the above-described substances may have severe side effects or - if used improperly - may cause more damage than they prevent. Don't take any of these preventatively ... only if exposed to high levels of radiation. Consult your doctor before taking any of the above medicines.

6/28/2011 (Video) Obama to increase nuclear weapons production/refit plus wildfire threatens Los Alamos National Lab

Source: Democracy Now (I extracted the relevant video segment for relevance/brevity)
Date: 6/28/2011

The following Democracy Now interview with Greg Mello, leader of Los Alamos Study Group, not only warns that the Los Conchas wildfire in New Mexico threatens nuclear waste stored on the grounds of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but also sheds light on the fact that the Obama administration is actually increasing nuclear weapons production/upgrades. I knew that Obama was an advocate of nuclear power for energy production but did not realize he was actually working towards increasing/upgrading America's current nuclear weapons arsenal. As part of this effort, Los Alamos National Lab will build a new $6 billion facility for the production of plutonium.


Visit Democracy Now for interview transcript and full video

6/28/2011 How close is wildfire to nuclear waste at Los Alamos National Lab?

Source: Godlike Productions via Japan Pub Thinktank (Facebook Group)
by: Anonymous Coward

Disclaimer: This is a message board post and has not been fact checked

6/28/11 -- LOS ALAMOS FIRE MAP -- shows just how close the fire is to some serious waste!

I came across the most recent survey map of the wildfire in Los Alamos at the following site: [link to wildfiretoday.com] I thought it would be informative to overlay this map with a map showing the technical areas (TAs) and material disposition areas (MDAs) on the Los Alamos National Lab reservation. Check this out: [link to www.flickr.com] The fire is located within the hatched orange outline shown in the lower left-hand corner of the picture. I don't know the exact scale of this map but it is about 11 miles from Los Alamos to White Rock so that should give you some sense of distance. It appears that the fire, as of June 28th, is about a mile or so from TA-16 and TA-28. TA-16 is a tritium and high explosives processing facility according to: [link to www.lasg.org] TA-28 is an explosives storage area. As far as the MDAs go, the fire is closest to MDA-R, MDA-S, MDA-Z and MDA-AB. These contain various toxic metals, organics, high explosives and radioactive wastes mostly buried in pits. All of those 30,000 drums of low-level radioactive waste we have been hearing about are in MDA-G, which is further away from the fire at the moment. But, oddly, what we haven't heard much about is the storage site for transuranic waste which is in MDA-C. This one is a little scary. Here is the description from the LASG site: ------------------------------------------------ [link to www.lasg.org] Location: Technical Area (TA) -50 Period of use: Pits (6): June 1948 to December 1964 Shafts (107): 1958 to April 1974 Size: 11.8 acres Number and type of disposal units: Pits 1- 4: 610 by 40 feet Pit 5: 705 by 110 feet by about 18 feet Pit 6: 505 by 100 feet by about 23 feet Chemical pit: 180 by 25 feet by about 12 feet Vary between 1 to 2 feet in diameter, and 10 to 25 feet deep Specific wastes and quantities: Estimated Volume: 3,186,000 ft3 of TRU waste Pits contain, as of January 1973: 25 Curies (Ci) of uranium 26 Ci of plutonium-239 149 Ci of americium-241 Shafts contain: 49,136 Ci of tritium 40 Ci sodium-22 20 Ci of cobalt-60 31 Ci of strontium-90 5 Ci of uranium-233 50 Ci fission products 200 Ci of induced activity Also contains quantities of mercury, copper, cobalt, boron, beryllium, and silver. (2) Potential environmental impacts: Lies near Ten-Site Canyon New Mexico Environment Department's (NMED) Hazardous and Radioactive Material Bureau (HRMB) ranks this MDA as an area with a high probability of contaminant mobilization and a moderate to high potential of release to the groundwater. -------------------------------------------------- That is an insane amount of highly radioactive waste. And notice at the end there that it is ranked as HIGH probability of contaminant mobilization! Just a heads up for you guys. We really need to watch this thing!

6/29/2011 Radiation forecast data for health research

Source: NHK World
Date: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 08:36 +0900 (JST)

The Japanese government plans to help Fukushima Prefecture conduct health research for all local residents with estimates on the spread of radioactive substances from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
...
Read full article here